She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I, um. I trust you.” She dipped her eyes to the gravel as she said it, which meant it took her a few seconds to notice his outstretched hand. “Oh. I thought that was just a figure of speech.” Still, she hoisted herself upright and met him halfway, her other arm still wrapped protectively around her middle.
He knew his hands were rougher than most people’s and that he ran hot, generally. That had to be why her palm felt so impossibly cool and smooth against his, her rings gently clicking together as her long, graceful fingers curled toward his wrist. After being distracted by her hands all afternoon, it was weirdly satisfying to finally touch them—touch one, at least. Satisfying, but also whatever the opposite of satisfying was.
Maybe he was imagining it, but it seemed like her breathingshifted. She was looking down at their joined palms with an odd expression. Reluctantly, he released her before it turned from a businesslike handshake into just plain holding hands. She backed against her car, fingers swiping in vain against the air until she finally found the door handle. She cleared her throat.
“I only have one set of keys right now, but I can make you copies next time I go into Silverton.”
Niko opened his own door, resting his forearm on it and turning back to her. “I’m actually headed there now to pick up some supplies for another job. I could do it, if you want.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s not a problem.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s, um. Thank you.” She fished the keys out of her purse and tossed them to him. He stretched his arm up, but her aim was off, and they landed at least a foot to his left, sending up a cloud of dust. She grimaced. “Sorry.”
“S’okay.” He bent down to pick them up. They were connected by a plastic banana key chain bearing a cartoon face topped by thick furry eyebrows and googly eyes. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. It seemed jarring to think of Merritt, so tense and severe, picking it up in a store and taking it home. He shook it a little in his hand, watching the pupils jiggle, and looked up to see Merritt observing him with a perturbed look on her face.
It must have been the googly eyes that possessed him to blurt out, “Do you want to come?”
She blinked, her expression unreadable. “Come?”
“To Silverton. They have that big home supply store there; you could look at tiles and paint swatches and stuff. Might get the process going a little faster.”
Despite the cold, a bead of sweat trickled down his spine as he waited for her response. She was silent for so long, her browsknitted together and lips pursed, that he was close to just telling her to forget it. He didn’t know why he’d even asked.
But then she met his eyes again, and for the first time all day, her face relaxed into something resembling a smile.
“Sure. Okay.”
3
She’d agreed only because Silvertonwas more than an hour away, shedidneed to go there at some point, and she still hadn’t gotten comfortable navigating the narrow, winding mountain roads.
At least, that’s what Merritt told herself as she crossed the driveway toward Niko’s truck.
Walking through the house with him—the most time they’d ever spent alone together—she’d barely taken in anything he’d said, her attention centered on hiding how inexplicably frazzled she felt in his presence. She’d tried to get over her distant fixation on him by shoving it to the back of her mind, like a Tupperware in the fridge, but, as those things often did, it had grown a life of its own while her back was turned.
She shot him a brief smile of gratitude as he opened the passenger door for her but stopped short before climbing in.
“Do you…what should I do with this stuff?”
He was already halfway around to the other side. “Oh, shit. Sorry. You can just put it in the middle.”
She started to move the pile of debris into the center of the bench seat—junk, but no obvious garbage. A grubby pair of tennis shoes, loose ballpoint pens, a few CDs, an empty binder, a couple of beat-up baseball caps. Her hand closed around a soft, paint-stained T-shirt, and she had the irrational urge to bury her face in it.
She quickly released it and finished clearing the space, hoisting herself onto the seat as he did the same. The sunglasses in her purse weren’t prescription—she’d lost those almost as soon as she’d bought them—but the day was oppressively bright, and since she wasn’t driving, she swapped them out, the lines of the road going hazy.
They drove past the city limits in silence. She reached over and picked up one of the CDs, laughing in surprise when she realized what it was. “ABBA?”
Niko glanced at her, a little wounded, clearly interpreting her laughter as derisive. “What? You don’t like disco?”
She did, actually, but spending her formative years around the worst type of music snobs meant it had taken her way too long to realize it.
“It’s just not what I expected.” She slid it into the CD player, the car filling with the ethereal synths and shimmering keys of “Dancing Queen.”
He shrugged. “They’re my grandmother’s favorite. Reminds me of her.”
She flipped the case over in her hands, studying it, before sneaking another (slightly blurry) look at him.
